What Is Man? by Mark Twain

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Jean's spirit will make it beautiful for me always. Her lonelyand tragic death--but I will not think of that now.

Jean's mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmasshopping, and was always physically exhausted when Christmas Evecame. Jean was her very own child--she wore herself out present-hunting in New York these latter days. Paine has just found onher desk a long list of names--fifty, he thinks--people to whomshe sent presents last night. Apparently she forgot no one. AndKaty found there a roll of bank-notes, for the servants.

Her dog has been wandering about the grounds today,comradeless and forlorn. I have seen him from the windows. Shegot him from Germany. He has tall ears and looks exactly like awolf. He was educated in Germany, and knows no language but theGerman. Jean gave him no orders save in that tongue. And sowhen the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor at midnight afortnight ago, the butler, who is French and knows no German,tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. Jeanwrote me, to Bermuda, about the incident. It was the last letterI was ever to receive from her bright head and her competent hand.The dog will not be neglected.

There was never a kinder heart than Jean's. From herchildhood up she always spent the most of her allowance oncharities of one kind or another. After she became secretary andhad her income doubled she spent her money upon these things witha free hand. Mine too, I am glad and grateful to say.

She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved themall, birds, beasts, and everything--even snakes--an inheritancefrom me. She knew all the birds; she was high up in that lore.She became a member of various humane societies when she wasstill a little girl--both here and abroad--and she remained anactive member to the last. She founded two or three societiesfor the protection of animals, here and in Europe.

She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished mycorrespondence out of the waste-basket and answered the letters.She thought all letters deserved the courtesy of an answer.Her mother brought her up in that kindly error.

She could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen.She had but an indifferent ear music, but her tongue took tolanguages with an easy facility. She never allowed her Italian,French, and German to get rusty through neglect.

The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide,now, just as they did in Italy five years and a half ago, whenthis child's mother laid down her blameless life. They cannotheal the hurt, but they take away some of the pain. When Jeanand I kissed hands and parted at my door last, how little did weimagine that in twenty-two hours the telegraph would be bringingwords like these:

"From the bottom of our hearts we send out sympathy,dearest of friends."

For many and many a day to come, wherever I go in this house,remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to me of her. Who cancount the number of them?

She was in exile two years with the hope of healing hermalady--epilepsy. There are no words to express how grateful Iam that she did not meet her fate in the hands of strangers, butin the loving shelter of her own home.

"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"

It is true. Jean is dead.

A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articlesfor magazines yet to appear, and now I am writing--this.

CHRISTMAS DAY. NOON.--Last night I went to Jean's room atintervals, and turned back the sheet and looked at the peacefulface, and kissed the cold brow, and remembered that heartbreakingnight in Florence so long ago, in that cavernous and silent vastvilla, when I crept downstairs so many times, and turned back asheet and looked at a face just like this one--Jean's mother'sface--and kissed a brow that was just like this one. And lastnight I saw again what I had seen then--that strange and lovelymiracle--the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored bythe gracious hand of death! When Jean's mother lay dead, alltrace of care, and trouble, and suffering, and the corrodingyears had vanished out of the face, and I was looking again uponit as I had known and worshipped it in its young bloom and beautya whole generation before.

About three in the morning, while wandering about the housein the deep silences, as one does in times like these, when thereis a dumb sense that something has been lost that will never befound again, yet must be sought, if only for the employment theuseless seeking gives, I came upon Jean's dog in the halldownstairs, and noted that he did not spring to greet me,according to his hospitable habit, but came slow and sorrowfully;also I remembered that he had not visited Jean's apartment sincethe tragedy. Poor fellow, did he know? I think so. Always whenJean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when she wasin the house he was with her, in the night as well as in the day.Her parlor was his bedroom. Whenever I happened upon him on theground floor he always followed me about, and when I wentupstairs he went too--in a tumultuous gallop. But now it wasdifferent: after patting him a little I went to the library--heremained behind; when I went upstairs he did not follow me, savewith his wistful eyes. He has wonderful eyes--big, and kind, andeloquent. He can talk with them. He is a beautiful creature,and is of the breed of the New York police-dogs. I do not likedogs, because they bark when there is no occasion for it; but Ihave liked this one from the beginning, because he belonged toJean, and because he never barks except when there is occasion--which is not oftener than twice a week.

In my wanderings I visited Jean's parlor. On a shelf Ifound a pile of my books, and I knew what it meant. She waswaiting for me to come home from Bermuda and autograph them, thenshe would send them away. If I only knew whom she intended themfor! But I shall never know. I will keep them. Her hand hastouched them--it is an accolade--they are noble, now.

And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me--a thing Ihave often wished I owned: a noble big globe. I couldn't see itfor the tears. She will never know the pride I take in it, andthe pleasure. Today the mails are full of loving remembrancesfor her: full of those old, old kind words she loved so well,"Merry Christmas to Jean!" If she could only have lived one daylonger!

At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. Soshe sent to one of those New York homes for poor girls all theclothes she could spare--and more, most likely.

CHRISTMAS NIGHT.--This afternoon they took her away from herroom. As soon as I might, I went down to the library, and thereshe lay, in her coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes shewore when she stood at the other end of the same room on the 6thof October last, as Clara's chief bridesmaid. Her face wasradiant with happy excitement then; it was the same face now,with the dignity of death and the peace of God upon it.

They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He cameuninvited, and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore pawsupon the trestle, and took a last long look at the face that wasso dear to him, then went his way as silently as he had come.HE KNOWS.

At mid-afternoon it began to snow. The pity of it--thatJean could not see it! She so loved the snow.

The snow continued to fall. At six o'clock the hearse drewup to the door to bear away its pathetic burden. As they liftedthe casket, Paine began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert's"Impromptu," which was Jean's favorite. Then he played theIntermezzo; that was for Susy; then he played the Largo; that wasfor their mother. He did this at my request. Elsewhere in myAutobiography I have told how the Intermezzo and the Largo cameto be associated in my heart with Susy and Livy in their lasthours in this life.

From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages windalong the road and gradually grow vague and spectral in thefalling snow, and presently disappear. Jean was gone out of mylife, and would not come back any more. Jervis, the cousin shehad played with when they were babies together--he and herbeloved old Katy--were conducting her to her distant childhoodhome, where she will lie by her mother's side once more, in thecompany of Susy and Langdon.

DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o'clock thismorning. He was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will behis quarters hereafter.

The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning.The snow drives across the landscape in vast clouds, superb,sublime--and Jean not here to see.

2:30 P.M.--It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun.Four hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I werethere. The scene is the library in the Langdon homestead.Jean's coffin stands where her mother and I stood, forty yearsago, and were married; and where Susy's coffin stood thirteenyears ago; where her mother's stood five years and a half ago;and where mine will stand after a little time.

FIVE O'CLOCK.--It is all over.

When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it washard, but I could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said WE wouldbe a family. We said we would be close comrades and happy--justwe two. That fair dream was in my mind when Jean met me at thesteamer last Monday; it was in my mind when she received me atthe door last Tuesday evening. We were together; WE WERE AFAMILY! the dream had come true--oh, precisely true, contentedly,true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.

And now? Now Jean is in her grave!

In the grave--if I can believe it. God rest her sweetspirit!

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1. Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens familyfor twenty-nine years.

2. Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis.

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THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE

I

If I understand the idea, the BAZAR invites several of us towrite upon the above text. It means the change in my life'scourse which introduced what must be regarded by me as the mostIMPORTANT condition of my career. But it also implies--withoutintention, perhaps--that that turning-point ITSELF was thecreator of the new condition. This gives it too muchdistinction, too much prominence, too much credit. It is onlythe LAST link in a very long chain of turning-points commissionedto produce the cardinal result; it is not any more important thanthe humblest of its ten thousand predecessors. Each of the tenthousand did its appointed share, on its appointed date, inforwarding the scheme, and they were all necessary; to have leftout any one of them would have defeated the scheme and broughtabout SOME OTHER result. It know we have a fashion of saying"such and such an event was the turning-point in my life," but weshouldn't say it. We should merely grant that its place as LASTlink in the chain makes it the most CONSPICUOUS link; in realimportance it has no advantage over any one of its predecessors.

Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded inhistory was the crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:

Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, hehalted for a while, and, revolving in his mind the importance ofthe step he was on the point of taking, he turned to those abouthim and said, "We may still retreat; but if we pass this littlebridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in arms."

This was a stupendously important moment. And all theincidents, big and little, of Caesar's previous life had beenleading up to it, stage by stage, link by link. This was theLAST link--merely the last one, and no bigger than the others;but as we gaze back at it through the inflating mists of ourimagination, it looks as big as the orbit of Neptune.

You, the reader, have a PERSONAL interest in that link, andso have I; so has the rest of the human race. It was one of thelinks in your life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine.We may wait, now, with bated breath, while Caesar reflects.Your fate and mine are involved in his decision.

While he was thus hesitating, the following incidentoccurred. A person remarked for his noble mien and gracefulaspect appeared close at hand, sitting and playing upon a pipe.When not only the shepherds, but a number of soldiers also,flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters among them, hesnatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with it,and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to theother side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: "Let us go whither theomens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us.THE DIE IS CAST."

So he crossed--and changed the future of the whole humanrace, for all time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar'slife-chain, too; and a necessary one. We don't know his name, wenever hear of him again; he was very casual; he acts like anaccident; but he was no accident, he was there by compulsion ofHIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying blast that was to makeup Caesar's mind for him, and thence go piping down the aisles ofhistory forever.

If the stranger hadn't been there! But he WAS. And Caesarcrossed. With such results! Such vast events--each a link inthe HUMAN RACE'S life-chain; each event producing the next one,and that one the next one, and so on: the destruction of therepublic; the founding of the empire; the breaking up of theempire; the rise of Christianity upon its ruins; the spread ofthe religion to other lands--and so on; link by link took itsappointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of Americabeing one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of Englishand other immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestorsamong them) another; the settlement of certain of them inMissouri, which resulted in ME. For I was one of the unavoidableresults of the crossing of the Rubicon. If the stranger, withhis trumpet blast, had stayed away (which he COULDN'T, for he wasthe appointed link) Caesar would not have crossed. What wouldhave happened, in that case, we can never guess. We only knowthat the things that did happen would not have happened. Theymight have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course,but their nature and results are beyond our guessing. But thematter that interests me personally is that I would not be HEREnow, but somewhere else; and probably black--there is no telling.Very well, I am glad he crossed. And very really and thankfullyglad, too, though I never cared anything about it before.

II

To me, the most important feature of my life is its literaryfeature. I have been professionally literary something more thanforty years. There have been many turning-points in my life, butthe one that was the link in the chain appointed to conduct me tothe literary guild is the most CONSPICUOUS link in that chain.BECAUSE it was the last one. It was not any more important thanits predecessors. All the other links have an inconspicuouslook, except the crossing of the Rubicon; but as factors inmaking me literary they are all of the one size, the crossing ofthe Rubicon included.

I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the stepsthat lead up to it and brought it about.

The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it washardly even a recent one; I should have to go back ages beforeCaesar's day to find the first one. To save space I will go backonly a couple of generations and start with an incident of myboyhood. When I was twelve and a half years old, my father died.It was in the spring. The summer came, and brought with it anepidemic of measles. For a time a child died almost every day.The village was paralyzed with fright, distress, despair.Children that were not smitten with the disease were imprisonedin their homes to save them from the infection. In the homesthere were no cheerful faces, there was no music, there was nosinging but of solemn hymns, no voice but of prayer, no rompingwas allowed, no noise, no laughter, the family moved spectrallyabout on tiptoe, in a ghostly hush. I was a prisoner. My soulwas steeped in this awful dreariness--and in fear. At some timeor other every day and every night a sudden shiver shook me tothe marrow, and I said to myself, "There, I've got it! and Ishall die." Life on these miserable terms was not worth living,and at last I made up my mind to get the disease and have itover, one way or the other. I escaped from the house and went tothe house of a neighbor where a playmate of mine was very illwith the malady. When the chance offered I crept into his roomand got into bed with him. I was discovered by his mother andsent back into captivity. But I had the disease; they could nottake that from me. I came near to dying. The whole village wasinterested, and anxious, and sent for news of me every day; andnot only once a day, but several times. Everybody believed Iwould die; but on the fourteenth day a change came for the worseand they were disappointed.

This was a turning-point of my life. (Link number one.)For when I got well my mother closed my school career andapprenticed me to a printer. She was tired of trying to keep meout of mischief, and the adventure of the measles decided her toput me into more masterful hands than hers.

I became a printer, and began to add one link after anotherto the chain which was to lead me into the literary profession.A long road, but I could not know that; and as I did not knowwhat its goal was, or even that it had one, I was indifferent.Also contented.

A young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking andfinding work; and seeking again, when necessity commands. N. B.Necessity is a CIRCUMSTANCE; Circumstance is man's master--andwhen Circumstance commands, he must obey; he may argue thematter--that is his privilege, just as it is the honorableprivilege of a falling body to argue with the attraction ofgravitation--but it won't do any good, he must OBEY. I wanderedfor ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship ofCircumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where Iworked several months. Among the books that interested me inthose days was one about the Amazon. The traveler told analluring tale of his long voyage up the great river from Para tothe sources of the Madeira, through the heart of an enchantedland, a land wastefully rich in tropical wonders, a romantic landwhere all the birds and flowers and animals were of the museumvarieties, and where the alligator and the crocodile and themonkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the Zoo. Also,he told an astonishing tale about COCA, a vegetable product ofmiraculous powers, asserting that it was so nourishing and sostrength-giving that the native of the mountains of the Madeiraregion would tramp up hill and down all day on a pinch ofpowdered coca and require no other sustenance.

I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. Also witha longing to open up a trade in coca with all the world. Duringmonths I dreamed that dream, and tried to contrive ways to get toPara and spring that splendid enterprise upon an unsuspectingplanet. But all in vain. A person may PLAN as much as he wantsto, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until themagician CIRCUMSTANCE steps in and takes the matter off hishands. At last Circumstance came to my help. It was in thisway. Circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him lose afifty-dollar bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made mefind it. I advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the sameday. This was another turning-point, another link.

Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that townto go to the Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty-dollar basis and been obeyed? No, I was the only one. Therewere other fools there--shoals and shoals of them--but they werenot of my kind. I was the only one of my kind.

Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it hasto have a partner. Its partner is man's TEMPERAMENT--his naturaldisposition. His temperament is not his invention, it is BORN inhim, and he has no authority over it, neither is he responsiblefor its acts. He cannot change it, nothing can change it,nothing can modify it--except temporarily. But it won't staymodified. It is permanent, like the color of the man's eyes andthe shape of his ears. Blue eyes are gray in certain unusual lights;but they resume their natural color when that stress is removed.

A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effectupon a man of a different temperament. If Circumstance hadthrown the bank-note in Caesar's way, his temperament would nothave made him start for the Amazon. His temperament would havecompelled him to do something with the money, but not that. Itmight have made him advertise the note--and WAIT. We can't tell.Also, it might have made him go to New York and buy into theGovernment, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to learnwhen it came his turn.

Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and mytemperament told me what to do with it. Sometimes a temperamentis an ass. When that is the case of the owner of it is an ass,too, and is going to remain one. Training, experience,association, can temporarily so polish him, improve him, exalthim that people will think he is a mule, but they will bemistaken. Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but atbottom he is an ass yet, and will remain one.

By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things.Does them, and reflects afterward. So I started for the Amazonwithout reflecting and without asking any questions. That wasmore than fifty years ago. In all that time my temperament hasnot changed, by even a shade. I have been punished many and manya time, and bitterly, for doing things and reflecting afterward,but these tortures have been of no value to me; I still do thething commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and reflectafterward. Always violently. When I am reflecting, on theseoccasions, even deaf persons can hear me think.

I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio andMississippi. My idea was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para.In New Orleans I inquired, and found there was no ship leavingfor Para. Also, that there never had BEEN one leaving for Para.I reflected. A policeman came and asked me what I was doing, andI told him. He made me move on, and said if he caught mereflecting in the public street again he would run me in.

After a few days I was out of money. Then Circumstancearrived, with another turning-point of my life--a new link. Onmy way down, I had made the acquaintance of a pilot. I beggedhim to teach me the river, and he consented. I became a pilot.

By and by Circumstance came again--introducing the CivilWar, this time, in order to push me ahead another stage or twotoward the literary profession. The boats stopped running, mylivelihood was gone.

Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point anda fresh link. My brother was appointed secretary to the newTerritory of Nevada, and he invited me to go with him and helphim in his office. I accepted.

In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and Iwent into the mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but thatwas not the idea. The idea was to advance me another step towardliterature. For amusement I scribbled things for the VirginiaCity ENTERPRISE. One isn't a printer ten years without settingup acres of good and bad literature, and learning--unconsciouslyat first, consciously later--to discriminate between the two,within his mental limitations; and meantime he is unconsciouslyacquiring what is called a "style." One of my efforts attractedattention, and the ENTERPRISE sent for me and put me on its staff.

And so I became a journalist--another link. By and by Circumstanceand the Sacramento UNION sent me to the Sandwich Islands for fiveor six months, to write up sugar. I did it; and threw in a gooddeal of extraneous matter that hadn't anything to do with sugar.But it was this extraneous matter that helped me to another link.

It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture.Which I did. And profitably. I had long had a desire to traveland see the world, and now Circumstance had most kindly andunexpectedly hurled me upon the platform and furnished me the means.So I joined the "Quaker City Excursion."

When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier--with the LAST link--the conspicuous, the consummating, thevictorious link: I was asked to WRITE A BOOK, and I did it, andcalled it THE INNOCENTS ABROAD. Thus I became at last a memberof the literary guild. That was forty-two years ago, and I havebeen a member ever since. Leaving the Rubicon incident away backwhere it belongs, I can say with truth that the reason I am inthe literary profession is because I had the measles when I wastwelve years old.

III

Now what interests me, as regards these details, is not thedetails themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseenby me, none of them was planned by me, I was the author of noneof them. Circumstance, working in harness with my temperament,created them all and compelled them all. I often offered help,and with the best intentions, but it was rejected--as a rule,uncourteously. I could never plan a thing and get it to come outthe way I planned it. It came out some other way--some way I hadnot counted upon.

And so I do not admire the human being--as an intellectualmarvel--as much as I did when I was young, and got him out ofbooks, and did not know him personally. When I used to read thatsuch and such a general did a certain brilliant thing, I believedit. Whereas it was not so. Circumstance did it by help of histemperament. The circumstances would have failed of effect witha general of another temperament: he might see the chance, butlose the advantage by being by nature too slow or too quick ortoo doubtful. Once General Grant was asked a question about amatter which had been much debated by the public and thenewspapers; he answered the question without any hesitancy."General, who planned the the march through Georgia?" "Theenemy!" He added that the enemy usually makes your plans foryou. He meant that the enemy by neglect or through force ofcircumstances leaves an opening for you, and you see your chanceand take advantage of it.

Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by helpof our temperaments. I see no great difference between a man anda watch, except that the man is conscious and the watch isn't,and the man TRIES to plan things and the watch doesn't. Thewatch doesn't wind itself and doesn't regulate itself--thesethings are done exteriorly. Outside influences, outsidecircumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left to himself,he wouldn't get regulated at all, and the sort of time he wouldkeep would not be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches,with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, andsome men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am aWaterbury. A Waterbury of that kind, some say.

A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plansand Circumstances comes and upsets them--or enlarges them. Somepatriots throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy aBastille. The PLANS stop there; then Circumstance comes in,quite unexpectedly, and turns these modest riots into a revolution.

And there was poor Columbus. He elaborated a deep plan tofind a new route to an old country. Circumstance revised hisplan for him, and he found a new WORLD. And HE gets the creditof it to this day. He hadn't anything to do with it.

Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life(and of yours) was the Garden of Eden. It was there that thefirst link was forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead tothe emptying of me into the literary guild. Adam's TEMPERAMENTwas the first command the Deity ever issued to a human being onthis planet. And it was the only command Adam would NEVER beable to disobey. It said, "Be weak, be water, be characterless,be cheaply persuadable." The latter command, to let the fruitalone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but byhis TEMPERAMENT--which he did not create and had no authorityover. For the TEMPERAMENT is the man; the thing tricked out withclothes and named Man is merely its Shadow, nothing more. Thelaw of the tiger's temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law ofthe sheep's temperament is Thou shalt not kill. To issue latercommands requiring the tiger to let the fat stranger alone, andrequiring the sheep to imbue its hands in the blood of the lionis not worth while, for those commands CAN'T be obeyed. Theywould invite to violations of the law of TEMPERAMENT, which issupreme, and take precedence of all other authorities. I cannothelp feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That is, in theirtemperaments. Not in THEM, poor helpless young creatures--afflicted with temperaments made out of butter; which butter wascommanded to get into contact with fire and BE MELTED. What Icannot help wishing is, that Adam had been postponed, and MartinLuther and Joan of Arc put in their place--that splendid pairequipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos.By neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan havebeguiled THEM to eat the apple. There would have been results!Indeed, yes. The apple would be intact today; there would be nohuman race; there would be no YOU; there would be no ME. And theold, old creation-dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into theliterary guild would have been defeated.

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HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK

These chapters are for children, and I shall try to make thewords large enough to command respect. In the hope that you arelistening, and that you have confidence in me, I will proceed.Dates are difficult things to acquire; and after they areacquired it is difficult to keep them in the head. But they arevery valuable. They are like the cattle-pens of a ranch--theyshut in the several brands of historical cattle, each within itsown fence, and keep them from getting mixed together. Dates arehard to remember because they consist of figures; figures aremonotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold,they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance tohelp. Pictures are the thing. Pictures can make dates stick.They can make nearly anything stick--particularly IF YOU MAKE THEPICTURES YOURSELF. Indeed, that is the great point--make thepictures YOURSELF. I know about this from experience. Thirtyyears ago I was delivering a memorized lecture every night, andevery night I had to help myself with a page of notes to keepfrom getting myself mixed. The notes consisted of beginnings ofsentences, and were eleven in number, and they ran something likethis:

"IN THAT REGION THE WEATHER--"

"AT THAT TIME IT WAS A CUSTOM--"

"BUT IN CALIFORNIA ONE NEVER HEARD--"

Eleven of them. They initialed the brief divisions of thelecture and protected me against skipping. But they all lookedabout alike on the page; they formed no picture; I had them byheart, but I could never with certainty remember the order oftheir succession; therefore I always had to keep those notes byme and look at them every little while. Once I mislaid them; youwill not be able to imagine the terrors of that evening. I nowsaw that I must invent some other protection. So I got ten ofthe initial letters by heart in their proper order--I, A, B, andso on--and I went on the platform the next night with thesemarked in ink on my ten finger-nails. But it didn't answer. Ikept track of the figures for a while; then I lost it, and afterthat I was never quite sure which finger I had used last. Icouldn't lick off a letter after using it, for while that wouldhave made success certain it also would have provoked too muchcuriosity. There was curiosity enough without that. To theaudience I seemed more interested in my fingernails than I was inmy subject; one or two persons asked me afterward what was thematter with my hands.

It was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then mytroubles passed away. In two minutes I made six pictures with apen, and they did the work of the eleven catch-sentences, and didit perfectly. I threw the pictures away as soon as they weremade, for I was sure I could shut my eyes and see them any time.That was a quarter of a century ago; the lecture vanished out ofmy head more than twenty years ago, but I would rewrite it fromthe pictures--for they remain. Here are three of them: (Fig. 1).

The first one is a haystack--below it a rattlesnake--and ittold me where to begin to talk ranch-life in Carson Valley. Thesecond one told me where to begin the talk about a strange andviolent wind that used to burst upon Carson City from the SierraNevadas every afternoon at two o'clock and try to blow the townaway. The third picture, as you easily perceive, is lightning;its duty was to remind me when it was time to begin to talk aboutSan Francisco weather, where there IS no lightning--nor thunder,either--and it never failed me.

I will give you a valuable hint. When a man is making aspeech and you are to follow him don't jot down notes to speakfrom, jot down PICTURES. It is awkward and embarrassing to haveto keep referring to notes; and besides it breaks up your speechand makes it ragged and non-coherent; but you can tear up yourpictures as soon as you have made them--they will stay fresh andstrong in your memory in the order and sequence in which youscratched them down. And many will admire to see what a goodmemory you are furnished with, when perhaps your memory is notany better than mine.

Sixteen years ago when my children were little creatures thegoverness was trying to hammer some primer histories into theirheads. Part of this fun--if you like to call it that--consistedin the memorizing of the accession dates of the thirty-sevenpersonages who had ruled England from the Conqueror down. Theselittle people found it a bitter, hard contract. It was alldates, and all looked alike, and they wouldn't stick. Day afterday of the summer vacation dribbled by, and still the kings heldthe fort; the children couldn't conquer any six of them.

With my lecture experience in mind I was aware that I couldinvent some way out of the trouble with pictures, but I hoped away could be found which would let them romp in the open airwhile they learned the kings. I found it, and they masteredall the monarchs in a day or two.

The idea was to make them SEE the reigns with their eyes;that would be a large help. We were at the farm then. From thehouse-porch the grounds sloped gradually down to the lower fenceand rose on the right to the high ground where my small work-denstood. A carriage-road wound through the grounds and up thehill. I staked it out with the English monarchs, beginning withthe Conqueror, and you could stand on the porch and clearly seeevery reign and its length, from the Conquest down to Victoria,then in the forty-sixth year of her reign--EIGHT HUNDRED ANDSEVENTEEN YEARS OF English history under your eye at once!

English history was an unusually live topic in America justthen. The world had suddenly realized that while it was notnoticing the Queen had passed Henry VIII., passed Henry VI. andElizabeth, and gaining in length every day. Her reign hadentered the list of the long ones; everybody was interested now--it was watching a race. Would she pass the long Edward? Therewas a possibility of it. Would she pass the long Henry?Doubtful, most people said. The long George? Impossible!Everybody said it. But we have lived to see her leave him twoyears behind.

I measured off 817 feet of the roadway, a foot representinga year, and at the beginning and end of each reign I drove athree-foot white-pine stake in the turf by the roadside and wrotethe name and dates on it. Abreast the middle of the porch-frontstood a great granite flower-vase overflowing with a cataract ofbright-yellow flowers--I can't think of their name. The vase ofWilliam the Conqueror. We put his name on it and his accessiondate, 1066. We started from that and measured off twenty-onefeet of the road, and drove William Rufus's state; then thirteenfeet and drove the first Henry's stake; then thirty-five feet anddrove Stephen's; then nineteen feet, which brought us just pastthe summer-house on the left; then we staked out thirty-five,ten, and seventeen for the second Henry and Richard and John;turned the curve and entered upon just what was needed for HenryIII.--a level, straight stretch of fifty-six feet of road withouta crinkle in it. And it lay exactly in front of the house, inthe middle of the grounds. There couldn't have been a betterplace for that long reign; you could stand on the porch and seethose two wide-apart stakes almost with your eyes shut. (Fig. 2.)

That isn't the shape of the road--I have bunched it up likethat to save room. The road had some great curves in it, buttheir gradual sweep was such that they were no mar to history.No, in our road one could tell at a glance who was who by the sizeof the vacancy between stakes--with LOCALITY to help, of course.

Although I am away off here in a Swedish village [1] andthose stakes did not stand till the snow came, I can see themtoday as plainly as ever; and whenever I think of an Englishmonarch his stakes rise before me of their own accord and Inotice the large or small space which he takes up on our road.Are your kings spaced off in your mind? When you think ofRichard III. and of James II. do the durations of their reignsseem about alike to you? It isn't so to me; I always notice thatthere's a foot's difference. When you think of Henry III. do yousee a great long stretch of straight road? I do; and just at theend where it joins on to Edward I. I always see a small pear-bushwith its green fruit hanging down. When I think of theCommonwealth I see a shady little group of these small saplingswhich we called the oak parlor; when I think of George III. I seehim stretching up the hill, part of him occupied by a flight ofstone steps; and I can locate Stephen to an inch when he comesinto my mind, for he just filled the stretch which went by thesummer-house. Victoria's reign reached almost to my study dooron the first little summit; there's sixteen feet to be added now;I believe that that would carry it to a big pine-tree that wasshattered by some lightning one summer when it was trying to hit me.

We got a good deal of fun out of the history road; andexercise, too. We trotted the course from the conqueror to thestudy, the children calling out the names, dates, and length ofreigns as we passed the stakes, going a good gait along the longreigns, but slowing down when we came upon people like Mary andEdward VI., and the short Stuart and Plantagenet, to give time toget in the statistics. I offered prizes, too--apples. I threwone as far as I could send it, and the child that first shoutedthe reign it fell in got the apple.

The children were encouraged to stop locating things asbeing "over by the arbor," or "in the oak parlor," or "up at thestone steps," and say instead that the things were in Stephen, orin the Commonwealth, or in George III. They got the habitwithout trouble. To have the long road mapped out with suchexactness was a great boon for me, for I had the habit of leavingbooks and other articles lying around everywhere, and had notpreviously been able to definitely name the place, and so hadoften been obliged to go to fetch them myself, to save time andfailure; but now I could name the reign I left them in, and sendthe children.

Next I thought I would measure off the French reigns, andpeg them alongside the English ones, so that we could always havecontemporaneous French history under our eyes as we went ourEnglish rounds. We pegged them down to the Hundred Years' War,then threw the idea aside, I do not now remember why. After thatwe made the English pegs fence in European and American historyas well as English, and that answered very well. English andalien poets, statesmen, artists, heroes, battles, plagues,cataclysms, revolutions--we shoveled them all into the Englishfences according to their dates. Do you understand? We gaveWashington's birth to George II.'s pegs and his death to GeorgeIII.'s; George II. got the Lisbon earthquake and George III. theDeclaration of Independence. Goethe, Shakespeare, Napoleon,Savonarola, Joan of Arc, the French Revolution, the Edict ofNantes, Clive, Wellington, Waterloo, Plassey, Patay, Cowpens,Saratoga, the Battle of the Boyne, the invention of thelogarithms, the microscope, the steam-engine, the telegraph--anything and everything all over the world--we dumped it allin among the English pegs according to it date and regardlessof its nationality.

If the road-pegging scheme had not succeeded I should havelodged the kings in the children's heads by means of pictures--that is, I should have tried. It might have failed, for thepictures could only be effective WHEN MADE BY THE PUPIL; not themaster, for it is the work put upon the drawing that makes thedrawing stay in the memory, and my children were too little to makedrawings at that time. And, besides, they had no talent for art,which is strange, for in other ways they are like me.

But I will develop the picture plan now, hoping that you willbe able to use it. It will come good for indoors when theweather is bad and one cannot go outside and peg a road. Let usimagine that the kings are a procession, and that they have comeout of the Ark and down Ararat for exercise and are now startingback again up the zigzag road. This will bring several of theminto view at once, and each zigzag will represent the length ofa king's reign.

And so on. You will have plenty of space, for by my projectyou will use the parlor wall. You do not mark on the wall; thatwould cause trouble. You only attach bits of paper to it withpins or thumb-tacks. These will leave no mark.

Take your pen now, and twenty-one pieces of white paper,each two inches square, and we will do the twenty-one years ofthe Conqueror's reign. On each square draw a picture of a whaleand write the dates and term of service. We choose the whale forseveral reasons: its name and William's begin with the sameletter; it is the biggest fish that swims, and William is themost conspicuous figure in English history in the way of alandmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to draw.By the time you have drawn twenty-one wales and written "WilliamI.--1066-1087--twenty-one years" twenty-one times, those detailswill be your property; you cannot dislodge them from your memorywith anything but dynamite. I will make a sample for you to copy:(Fig. 3).

I have got his chin up too high, but that is no matter; heis looking for Harold. It may be that a whale hasn't that fin upthere on his back, but I do not remember; and so, since there isa doubt, it is best to err on the safe side. He looks better,anyway, than he would without it.

Be very careful and ATTENTIVE while you are drawing yourfirst whale from my sample and writing the word and figures underit, so that you will not need to copy the sample any more.Compare your copy with the sample; examine closely; if you findyou have got everything right and can shut your eyes and see thepicture and call the words and figures, then turn the sample andcopy upside down and make the next copy from memory; and also thenext and next, and so on, always drawing and writing from memoryuntil you have finished the whole twenty-one. This will take youtwenty minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will find thatyou can make a whale in less time than an unpracticed person canmake a sardine; also, up to the time you die you will always beable to furnish William's dates to any ignorant person thatinquires after them.

You will now take thirteen pieces of BLUE paper, each twoinches square, and do William II. (Fig. 4.)

Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; alsomake him small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sicklook in the eye. Otherwise you might seem to be continuing theother William, and that would be confusing and a damage. It isquite right to make him small; he was only about a No. 11 whale,or along there somewhere; there wasn't room in him for hisfather's great spirit. The barb of that harpoon ought not toshow like that, because it is down inside the whale and ought tobe out of sight, but it cannot be helped; if the barb wereremoved people would think some one had stuck a whip-stock intothe whale. It is best to leave the barb the way it is, thenevery one will know it is a harpoon and attending to business.Remember--draw from the copy only once; make your other twelveand the inscription from memory.

Now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture andits inscription once from my sample and two or three times frommemory the details will stay with you and be hard to forget.After that, if you like, you may make merely the whale's HEAD andWATER-SPOUT for the Conqueror till you end his reign, each timeSAYING the inscription in place of writing it; and in the case ofWilliam II. make the HARPOON alone, and say over the inscriptioneach time you do it. You see, it will take nearly twice as longto do the first set as it will to do the second, and that willgive you a marked sense of the difference in length of the two reigns.

Next do Henry I. on thirty-five squares of RED paper.(Fig. 5.)

That is a hen, and suggests Henry by furnishing the first syllable.When you have repeated the hen and the inscription until you areperfectly sure of them, draw merely the hen's head the rest of thethirty-five times, saying over the inscription each time. Thus:(Fig. 6).

You begin to understand how how this procession is going tolook when it is on the wall. First there will be the Conqueror'stwenty-one whales and water-spouts, the twenty-one white squaresjoined to one another and making a white stripe three and one-half feet long; the thirteen blue squares of William II. will bejoined to that--a blue stripe two feet, two inches long, followedby Henry's red stripe five feet, ten inches long, and so on. Thecolored divisions will smartly show to the eye the difference inthe length of the reigns and impress the proportions on thememory and the understanding. (Fig. 7.)

That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning ofStephen's name. I choose it for that reason. I can make abetter steer than that when I am not excited. But this one willdo. It is a good-enough steer for history. The tail isdefective, but it only wants straightening out.

Next comes Henry II. Give him thirty-five squares of RED paper.These hens must face west, like the former ones. (Fig. 9.)

This hen differs from the other one. He is on his way toinquire what has been happening in Canterbury.

How we arrive at Richard I., called Richard of the Lion-heart because he was a brave fighter and was never so contentedas when he was leading crusades in Palestine and neglecting hisaffairs at home. Give him ten squares of WHITE paper. (Fig. 10).

That is a lion. His office is to remind you of the lion-hearted Richard. There is something the matter with his legs,but I do not quite know what it is, they do not seem right.I think the hind ones are the most unsatisfactory; the frontones are well enough, though it would be better if they wererights and lefts.

Next comes King John, and he was a poor circumstance.He was called Lackland. He gave his realm to the Pope.Let him have seventeen squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 11.)

That creature is a jamboree. It looks like a trademark, butthat is only an accident and not intentional. It is prehistoricand extinct. It used to roam the earth in the Old Siluriantimes, and lay eggs and catch fish and climb trees and live onfossils; for it was of a mixed breed, which was the fashion then.It was very fierce, and the Old Silurians were afraid of it, butthis is a tame one. Physically it has no representative now, butits mind has been transmitted. First I drew it sitting down, buthave turned it the other way now because I think it looks moreattractive and spirited when one end of it is galloping. I loveto think that in this attitude it gives us a pleasant idea ofJohn coming all in a happy excitement to see what the barons havebeen arranging for him at Runnymede, while the other one gives usan idea of him sitting down to wring his hands and grieve over it.

We now come to Henry III.; RED squares again, of course--fifty-six of them. We must make all the Henrys the same color;it will make their long reigns show up handsomely on the wall.Among all the eight Henrys there were but two short ones. Alucky name, as far as longevity goes. The reigns of six of theHenrys cover 227 years. It might have been well to name all theroyal princes Henry, but this was overlooked until it was too late.(Fig. 12.)

This is the best one yet. He is on his way (1265) to have alook at the first House of Commons in English history. It was amonumental event, the situation in the House, and was the secondgreat liberty landmark which the century had set up. I have madeHenry looking glad, but this was not intentional.

That is an editor. He is trying to think of a word. Heprops his feet on a chair, which is the editor's way; then he canthink better. I do not care much for this one; his ears are notalike; still, editor suggests the sound of Edward, and he willdo. I could make him better if I had a model, but I made thisone from memory. But is no particular matter; they all lookalike, anyway. They are conceited and troublesome, and don't payenough. Edward was the first really English king that had yetoccupied the throne. The editor in the picture probably looksjust as Edward looked when it was first borne in upon him thatthis was so. His whole attitude expressed gratification andpride mixed with stupefaction and astonishment.

Edward II. now; twenty BLUE squares. (Fig. 14.)

Another editor. That thing behind his ear is his pencil.Whenever he finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes itout with that. That does him good, and makes him smile and showhis teeth, the way he is doing in the picture. This one has justbeen striking out a smart thing, and now he is sitting there withhis thumbs in his vest-holes, gloating. They are full of envyand malice, editors are. This picture will serve to remind youthat Edward II. was the first English king who was DEPOSED. Upondemand, he signed his deposition himself. He had found kingshipa most aggravating and disagreeable occupation, and you can seeby the look of him that he is glad he resigned. He has put hisblue pencil up for good now. He had struck out many a good thingwith it in his time.

Edward III. next; fifty RED squares. (Fig. 15.)

This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he isgoing to have for breakfast. This one's arms are put on wrong.I did not notice it at first, but I see it now. Somehow he hasgot his right arm on his left shoulder, and his left arm on hisright shoulder, and this shows us the back of his hands in bothinstances. It makes him left-handed all around, which is a thingwhich has never happened before, except perhaps in a museum.That is the way with art, when it is not acquired but born toyou: you start in to make some simple little thing, notsuspecting that your genius is beginning to work and swell andstrain in secret, and all of a sudden there is a convulsion andyou fetch out something astonishing. This is called inspiration.It is an accident; you never know when it is coming. I mighthave tried as much as a year to think of such a strange thing asan all-around left-handed man and I could not have done it, forthe more you try to think of an unthinkable thing the more iteludes you; but it can't elude inspiration; you have only to baitwith inspiration and you will get it every time. Look atBotticelli's "Spring." Those snaky women were unthinkable, butinspiration secured them for us, thanks to goodness. It is toolate to reorganize this editor-critic now; we will leave him ashe is. He will serve to remind us.

Richard II. next; twenty-two WHITE squares. (Fig. 16.)

We use the lion again because this is another Richard. LikeEdward II., he was DEPOSED. He is taking a last sad look at hiscrown before they take it away. There was not room enough and Ihave made it too small; but it never fitted him, anyway.

Now we turn the corner of the century with a new line ofmonarchs--the Lancastrian kings.

Henry IV.; fourteen squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 17.)

This hen has laid the egg of a new dynasty and realizes themagnitude of the event. She is giving notice in the usual way.You notice I am improving in the construction of hens. At firstI made them too much like other animals, but this one isorthodox. I mention this to encourage you. You will find thatthe more you practice the more accurate you will become. I couldalways draw animals, but before I was educated I could not tellwhat kind they were when I got them done, but now I can. Keep upyour courage; it will be the same with you, although you may notthink it. This Henry died the year after Joan of Arc was born.

Henry V.; nine BLUE squares. (Fig. 18)

There you see him lost in meditation over the monument whichrecords the amazing figures of the battle of Agincourt. Frenchhistory says 20,000 Englishmen routed 80,000 Frenchmen there; andEnglish historians say that the French loss, in killed andwounded, was 60,000.

Henry VI.; thirty-nine RED squares. (Fig. 19)

This is poor Henry VI., who reigned long and scored manymisfortunes and humiliations. Also two great disasters: he lostFrance to Joan of Arc and he lost the throne and ended thedynasty which Henry IV. had started in business with such goodprospects. In the picture we see him sad and weary and downcast,with the scepter falling from his nerveless grasp. It is apathetic quenching of a sun which had risen in such splendor.

Edward IV.; twenty-two LIGHT-BROWN squares. (Fig. 20.)

That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed,with his legs crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothesthe ladies wear, so that he can describe them for his paper andmake them out finer than they are and get bribes for it andbecome wealthy. That flower which he is wearing in hisbuttonhole is a rose--a white rose, a York rose--and will serveto remind us of the War of the Roses, and that the white one wasthe winning color when Edward got the throne and dispossessed theLancastrian dynasty.

Edward V.; one-third of a BLACK square. (Fig. 21.)

His uncle Richard had him murdered in the tower. When youget the reigns displayed upon the wall this one will beconspicuous and easily remembered. It is the shortest one inEnglish history except Lady Jane Grey's, which was only ninedays. She is never officially recognized as a monarch ofEngland, but if you or I should ever occupy a throne we shouldlike to have proper notice taken of it; and it would be only fairand right, too, particularly if we gained nothing by it and lostour lives besides.

Richard III.; two WHITE squares. (Fig. 22.)

That is not a very good lion, but Richard was not a verygood king. You would think that this lion has two heads, butthat is not so; one is only a shadow. There would be shadows forthe rest of him, but there was not light enough to go round, itbeing a dull day, with only fleeting sun-glimpses now and then.Richard had a humped back and a hard heart, and fell at thebattle of Bosworth. I do not know the name of that flower in thepot, but we will use it as Richard's trade-mark, for it is saidthat it grows in only one place in the world--Bosworth Field--andtradition says it never grew there until Richard's royal bloodwarmed its hidden seed to life and made it grow.

Henry VII.; twenty-four BLUE squares. (Fig. 23.)

Henry VII. had no liking for wars and turbulence; hepreferred peace and quiet and the general prosperity which suchconditions create. He liked to sit on that kind of eggs on hisown private account as well as the nation's, and hatch them outand count up their result. When he died he left his heir2,000,000 pounds, which was a most unusual fortune for a king topossess in those days. Columbus's great achievement gave him thediscovery-fever, and he sent Sebastian Cabot to the New World tosearch out some foreign territory for England. That is Cabot'sship up there in the corner. This was the first time thatEngland went far abroad to enlarge her estate--but not the last.

Henry VIII.; thirty-eight RED squares. (Fig. 24.)

That is Henry VIII. suppressing a monastery in his arrogant fashion.

Edward VI.; six squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 25.)

He is the last Edward to date. It is indicated by thatthing over his head, which is a LAST--shoemaker's last.

Mary; five squares of BLACK paper. (Fig. 26.)

The picture represents a burning martyr. He is in back ofthe smoke. The first three letters of Mary's name and the firstthree of the word martyr are the same. Martyrdom was going outin her day and martyrs were becoming scarcer, but she madeseveral. For this reason she is sometimes called Bloody Mary.

This brings us to the reign of Elizabeth, after passingthrough a period of nearly five hundred years of England'shistory--492 to be exact. I think you may now be trusted to gothe rest of the way without further lessons in art orinspirations in the matter of ideas. You have the scheme now,and something in the ruler's name or career will suggest thepictorial symbol. The effort of inventing such things will notonly help your memory, but will develop originality in art. Seewhat it has done for me. If you do not find the parlor wall bigenough for all of England's history, continue it into the dining-room and into other rooms. This will make the walls interestingand instructive and really worth something instead of being justflat things to hold the house together.

-----1. Summer of 1899.

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THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION

Note.--The assassination of the Empress of Austria atGeneva, September 10, 1898, occurred during Mark Twain's Austrianresidence. The news came to him at Kaltenleutgeben, a summerresort a little way out of Vienna. To his friend, the Rev. Jos.H. Twichell, he wrote:

"That good and unoffending lady, the Empress, is killed by amadman, and I am living in the midst of world-history again. TheQueen's Jubilee last year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by thepolice, and now this murder, which will still be talked of anddescribed and painted a thousand a thousand years from now. Tohave a personal friend of the wearer of two crowns burst in atthe gate in the deep dusk of the evening and say, in a voicebroken with tears, 'My God! the Empress is murdered,' and flytoward her home before we can utter a question--why, it bringsthe giant event home to you, makes you a part of it andpersonally interested; it is as if your neighbor, Antony, shouldcome flying and say, 'Caesar is butchered--the head of the worldis fallen!'

"Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning isuniversal and genuine, the consternation is stupefying. TheAustrian Empire is being draped with black. Vienna will be aspectacle to see by next Saturday, when the funeral cort`egemarches."

He was strongly moved by the tragedy, impelled to writeconcerning it. He prepared the article which follows, but didnot offer it for publication, perhaps feeling that his own closeassociation with the court circles at the moment prohibited thispersonal utterance. There appears no such reason for withholdingits publication now.

A. B. P.

The more one thinks of the assassination, the more imposingand tremendous the event becomes. The destruction of a city is alarge event, but it is one which repeats itself several times ina thousand years; the destruction of a third part of a nation byplague and famine is a large event, but it has happened severaltimes in history; the murder of a king is a large event, but ithas been frequent.

The murder of an empress is the largest of all events. Onemust go back about two thousand years to find an instance to putwith this one. The oldest family of unchallenged descent inChristendom lives in Rome and traces its line back seventeenhundred years, but no member of it has been present in the earthwhen an empress was murdered, until now. Many a time duringthese seventeen centuries members of that family have beenstartled with the news of extraordinary events--the destructionof cities, the fall of thrones, the murder of kings, the wreck ofdynasties, the extinction of religions, the birth of new systemsof government; and their descendants have been by to hear of itand talk about it when all these things were repeated once,twice, or a dozen times--but to even that family has come news atlast which is not staled by use, has no duplicates in the longreach of its memory.

It is an event which confers a curious distinction uponevery individual now living in the world: he has stood alive andbreathing in the presence of an event such as has not fallenwithin the experience of any traceable or untraceable ancestor ofhis for twenty centuries, and it is not likely to fall within theexperience of any descendant of his for twenty more.

Time has made some great changes since the Roman days. Themurder of an empress then--even the assassination of Caesarhimself--could not electrify the world as this murder haselectrified it. For one reason, there was then not much of aworld to electrify; it was a small world, as to known bulk, andit had rather a thin population, besides; and for another reason,the news traveled so slowly that its tremendous initial thrillwasted away, week by week and month by month, on the journey, andby the time it reached the remoter regions there was but littleof it left. It was no longer a fresh event, it was a thing ofthe far past; it was not properly news, it was history. But theworld is enormous now, and prodigiously populated--that is onechange; and another is the lightning swiftness of the flight oftidings, good and bad. "The Empress is murdered!" When thoseamazing words struck upon my ear in this Austrian village lastSaturday, three hours after the disaster, I knew that it wasalready old news in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, SanFrancisco, Japan, China, Melbourne, Cape Town, Bombay, Madras,Calcutta, and that the entire globe with a single voice, wascursing the perpetrator of it. Since the telegraph first beganto stretch itself wider and wider about the earth, larger andincreasingly larger areas of the world have, as time went on,received simultaneously the shock of a great calamity; but thisis the first time in history that the entire surface of the globehas been swept in a single instant with the thrill of so gigantican event.

And who is the miracle-worker who has furnished to the worldthis spectacle? All the ironies are compacted in the answer. Heis at the bottom of the human ladder, as the accepted estimatesof degree and value go: a soiled and patched young loafer,without gifts, without talents, without education, withoutmorals, without character, without any born charm or any acquiredone that wins or beguiles or attracts; without a single grace ofmind or heart or hand that any tramp or prostitute could envyhim; an unfaithful private in the ranks, an incompetent stone-cutter, an inefficient lackey; in a word, a mangy, offensive,empty, unwashed, vulgar, gross, mephitic, timid, sneaking, humanpolecat. And it was within the privileges and powers of thissarcasm upon the human race to reach up--up--up--and strike fromits far summit in the social skies the world's accepted ideal ofGlory and Might and Splendor and Sacredness! It realizes to uswhat sorry shows and shadows we are. Without our clothes and ourpedestals we are poor things and much of a size; our dignitiesare not real, our pomps are shams. At our best and stateliest weare not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and believe, but onlycandles; and any bummer can blow us out.

And now we get realized to us once more another thing whichwe often forget--or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseasedmind; that in one way or another all men are mad. Many are madfor money. When this madness is in a mild form it is harmlessand the man passes for sane; but when it develops powerfully andtakes possession of the man, it can make him cheat, rob, andkill; and when he has got his fortune and lost it again it canland him in the asylum or the suicide's coffin. Love is amadness; if thwarted it develops fast; it can grow to a frenzy ofdespair and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, likeRudolph, throw away the crown of an empire and snuff out his ownlife. All the whole list of desires, predilections, aversions,ambitions, passions, cares, griefs, regrets, remorses, areincipient madness, and ready to grow, spread, and consume, whenthe occasion comes. There are no healthy minds, and nothingsaves any man but accident--the accident of not having his maladyput to the supreme test.

One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to benoticed, the pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it isnot merely common, but universal. In its mildest form itdoubtless is universal. Every child is pleased at being noticed;many intolerable children put in their whole time in distressingand idiotic effort to attract the attention of visitors; boys arealways "showing off"; apparently all men and women are glad andgrateful when they find that they have done a thing which haslifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused wonderingtalk. This common madness can develop, by nurture, into a hungerfor notoriety in one, for fame in another. It is this madnessfor being noticed and talked about which has invented kingshipand the thousand other dignities, and tricked them out withpretty and showy fineries; it has made kings pick one another'spockets, scramble for one another's crowns and estates, slaughterone another's subjects; it has raised up prize-fighters, andpoets, and villages mayors, and little and big politicians, andbig and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions, andbanditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons.Anything to get notoriety; anything to set the village, or thetownship, or the city, or the State, or the nation, or the planetshouting, "Look--there he goes--that is the man!" And in fiveminutes' time, at no cost of brain, or labor, or genius thismangy Italian tramp has beaten them all, transcended them all,outstripped them all, for in time their names will perish; but bythe friendly help of the insane newspapers and courts and kingsand historians, his is safe and live and thunder in the world alldown the ages as long as human speech shall endure! Oh, if itwere not so tragic how ludicrous it would be!

She was so blameless, the Empress; and so beautiful, in mindand heart, in person and spirit; and whether with a crown uponher head or without it and nameless, a grace to the human race,and almost a justification of its creation; WOULD be, indeed, butthat the animal that struck her down re-establishes the doubt.

In her character was every quality that in woman invites andengages respect, esteem, affection, and homage. Her tastes, herinstincts, and her aspirations were all high and fine and all herlife her heart and brain were busy with activities of a noblesort. She had had bitter griefs, but they did not sour herspirit, and she had had the highest honors in the world's gift,but she went her simple way unspoiled. She knew all ranks, andwon them all, and made them her friends. An English fisherman'swife said, "When a body was in trouble she didn't send her help,she brought it herself." Crowns have adorned others, but sheadorned her crowns.

It was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. And it ismarked by some curious contrasts. At noon last, Saturday therewas no one in the world who would have consideredacquaintanceship with him a thing worth claiming or mentioning;no one would have been vain of such an acquaintanceship; thehumblest honest boot-black would not have valued the fact that hehad met him or seen him at some time or other; he was sunk inabysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottomgrades of officialdom. Three hours later he was the one subjectof conversation in the world, the gilded generals and admiralsand governors were discussing him, all the kings and queens andemperors had put aside their other interests to talk about him.And wherever there was a man, at the summit of the world or thebottom of it, who by chance had at some time or other come acrossthat creature, he remembered it with a secret satisfaction, andMENTIONED it--for it was a distinction, now! It brings humandignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is not quiterealizable--but it is perfectly true. If there is a king who canremember, now, that he once saw that creature in a time past, hehas let that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual andindifferent way, some dozens of times during the past week. Fora king is merely human; the inside of him is exactly like theinside of any other person; and it is human to find satisfactionin being in a kind of personal way connected with amazing events.We are all privately vain of such a thing; we are all alike; aking is a king by accident; the reason the rest of us are notkings is merely due to another accident; we are all made out ofthe same clay, and it is a sufficient poor quality.

Below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; Iknow it well as if I were hearing them:

THE COMMANDER: "He was in my army."

THE GENERAL: "He was in my corps."

THE COLONEL: "He was in my regiment. A brute. I rememberhim well."

THE CAPTAIN: "He was in my company. A troublesomescoundrel. I remember him well."

THE SERGEANT: "Did I know him? As well as I know you.Why, every morning I used to--" etc., etc.; a glad, long story,told to devouring ears.

THE LANDLADY: "Many's the time he boarded with me. I canshow you his very room, and the very bed he slept in. And thecharcoal mark there on the wall--he made that. My little Johnnysaw him do it with his own eyes. Didn't you, Johnny?"

It is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate andthe constables and the jailer treasure up the assassin's dailyremarks and doings as precious things, and as wallowing this weekin seas of blissful distinction. The interviewer, too; he triedto let on that he is not vain of his privilege of contact withthis man whom few others are allowed to gaze upon, but he ishuman, like the rest, and can no more keep his vanity corked inthan could you or I.

Some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against thecriminal militarism which is impoverishing Europe and driving thestarving poor mad. That has many crimes to answer for, but notthis one, I think. One may not attribute to this man a generousindignation against the wrongs done the poor; one may not dignifyhim with a generous impulse of any kind. When he saw hisphotograph and said, "I shall be celebrated," he laid bare theimpulse that prompted him. It was a mere hunger for notoriety.There is another confessed case of the kind which is as old ashistory--the burning of the temple of Ephesus.

Among the inadequate attempts to account for theassassination we must concede high rank to the many which havedescribed it as a "peculiarly brutal crime" and then added thatit was "ordained from above." I think this verdict will not bepopular "above." If the deed was ordained from above, there isno rational way of making this prisoner even partiallyresponsible for it, and the Genevan court cannot condemn himwithout manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic, and bydisregarding its laws even the most pious and showy theologianmay be beguiled into preferring charges which should not beventured upon except in the shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.

I witnessed the funeral procession, in company with friends,from the windows of the Krantz, Vienna's sumptuous new hotel. Wecame into town in the middle of the forenoon, and I went on footfrom the station. Black flags hung down from all the houses; theaspects were Sunday-like; the crowds on the sidewalks were quietand moved slowly; very few people were smoking; many ladies woredeep mourning, gentlemen were in black as a rule; carriages werespeeding in all directions, with footmen and coachmen in blackclothes and wearing black cocked hats; the shops were closed; inmany windows were pictures of the Empress: as a beautiful youngbride of seventeen; as a serene and majestic lady with addedyears; and finally in deep black and without ornaments--thecostume she always wore after the tragic death of her son nineyears ago, for her heart broke then, and life lost almost all itsvalue for her. The people stood grouped before these pictures,and now and then one saw women and girls turn away wiping thetears from their eyes.

In front of the Krantz is an open square; over the way wasthe church where the funeral services would be held. It is smalland old and severely plain, plastered outside and whitewashed orpainted, and with no ornament but a statue of a monk in a nicheover the door, and above that a small black flag. But in itscrypt lie several of the great dead of the House of Habsburg,among them Maria Theresa and Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt.Hereabouts was a Roman camp, once, and in it the Emperor MarcusAurelius died a thousand years before the first Habsburg ruledin Vienna, which was six hundred years ago and more.

The little church is packed in among great modern stores andhouses, and the windows of them were full of people. Behind thevast plate-glass windows of the upper floors of the house on thecorner one glimpsed terraced masses of fine-clothed men andwomen, dim and shimmery, like people under water. Under us thesquare was noiseless, but it was full of citizens; officials infine uniforms were flitting about on errands, and in a doorstepsat a figure in the uttermost raggedness of poverty, the feetbare, the head bent humbly down; a youth of eighteen or twenty,he was, and through the field-glass one could see that he wastearing apart and munching riffraff that he had gatheredsomewhere. Blazing uniforms flashed by him, making a sparklingcontrast with his drooping ruin of moldy rags, but he took notnotice; he was not there to grieve for a nation's disaster; hehad his own cares, and deeper. From two directions two longfiles of infantry came plowing through the pack and press insilence; there was a low, crisp order and the crowd vanished, thesquare save the sidewalks was empty, the private mourner wasgone. Another order, the soldiers fell apart and enclosed thesquare in a double-ranked human fence. It was all so swift,noiseless, exact--like a beautifully ordered machine.

It was noon, now. Two hours of stillness and waitingfollowed. Then carriages began to flow past and deliver the twoand three hundred court personages and high nobilities privilegedto enter the church. Then the square filled up; not withcivilians, but with army and navy officers in showy and beautifuluniforms. They filled it compactly, leaving only a narrowcarriage path in front of the church, but there was no civilianamong them. And it was better so; dull clothes would have marredthe radiant spectacle. In the jam in front of the church, on itssteps, and on the sidewalk was a bunch of uniforms which made ablazing splotch of color--intense red, gold, and white--whichdimmed the brilliancies around them; and opposite them on theother side of the path was a bunch of cascaded bright-greenplumes above pale-blue shoulders which made another splotch ofsplendor emphatic and conspicuous in its glowing surroundings.It was a sea of flashing color all about, but these two groupswere the high notes. The green plumes were worn by forty orfifty Austrian generals, the group opposite them were chieflyKnights of Malta and knights of a German order. The mass ofheads in the square were covered by gilt helmets and by militarycaps roofed with a mirror-like gaze, and the movements of thewearers caused these things to catch the sun-rays, and the effectwas fine to see--the square was like a garden of richly coloredflowers with a multitude of blinding and flashing little sunsdistributed over it.

Think of it--it was by command of that Italian loafer yonderon his imperial throne in the Geneva prison that this splendidmultitude was assembled there; and the kings and emperors thatwere entering the church from a side street were there by his will.It is so strange, so unrealizable.

At three o'clock the carriages were still streaming by insingle file. At three-five a cardinal arrives with hisattendants; later some bishops; then a number of archdeacons--allin striking colors that add to the show. At three-ten aprocession of priests passed along, with crucifix. Another one,presently; after an interval, two more; at three-fifty anotherone--very long, with many crosses, gold-embroidered robes, andmuch white lace; also great pictured banners, at intervals,receding into the distance.

A hum of tolling bells makes itself heard, but not sharply.At three-fifty-eight a waiting interval. Presently a longprocession of gentlemen in evening dress comes in sight andapproaches until it is near to the square, then falls backagainst the wall of soldiers at the sidewalk, and the whiteshirt-fronts show like snowflakes and are very conspicuous whereso much warm color is all about.

A waiting pause. At four-twelve the head of the funeralprocession comes into view at last. First, a body of cavalry,four abreast, to widen the path. Next, a great body of lancers,in blue, with gilt helmets. Next, three six-horse mourning-coaches; outriders and coachmen in black, with cocked hats andwhite wigs. Next, troops in splendid uniforms, red, gold, andwhite, exceedingly showy.

Now the multitude uncover. The soldiers present arms; thereis a low rumble of drums; the sumptuous great hearse approaches,drawn at a walk by eight black horses plumed with black bunchesof nodding ostrich feathers; the coffin is borne into the church,the doors are closed.

The multitude cover their heads, and the rest of theprocession moves by; first the Hungarian Guard in theirindescribably brilliant and picturesque and beautiful uniform,inherited from the ages of barbaric splendor, and after themother mounted forces, a long and showy array.

Then the shining crown in the square crumbled apart, awrecked rainbow, and melted away in radiant streams, and in theturn of a wrist the three dirtiest and raggedest and cheerfulestlittle slum-girls in Austria were capering about in the spaciousvacancy. It was a day of contrasts.

Twice the Empress entered Vienna in state. The first timewas in 1854, when she was a bride of seventeen, and then she rodein measureless pomp and with blare of music through a flutteringworld of gay flags and decorations, down streets walled on bothhands with a press of shouting and welcoming subjects; and thesecond time was last Wednesday, when she entered the city in hercoffin and moved down the same streets in the dead of the nightunder swaying black flags, between packed human walls again; buteverywhere was a deep stillness, now--a stillness emphasized,rather than broken, by the muffled hoofbeats of the longcavalcade over pavements cushioned with sand, and the low sobbingof gray-headed women who had witnessed the first entry forty-fouryears before, when she and they were young--and unaware!

A character in Baron von Berger's recent fairy drama"Habsburg" tells about the first coming of the girlish Empress-Queen, and in his history draws a fine picture: I cannot make aclose translation of it, but will try to convey the spirit of theverses:

I saw the stately pageant pass:In her high place I saw the Empress-Queen:I could not take my eyes awayFrom that fair vision, spirit-like and pure,That rose serene, sublime, and figured to my senseA noble Alp far lighted in the blue,That in the flood of morning rends its veil of cloudAnd stands a dream of glory to the gazeOf them that in the Valley toil and plod.------------------------------------------------------------------

A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY

Marion City, on the Mississippi River, in the State ofMissouri--a village; time, 1845. La Bourboule-les-Bains, France--a village; time, the end of June, 1894. I was in the onevillage in that early time; I am in the other now. These timesand places are sufficiently wide apart, yet today I have thestrange sense of being thrust back into that Missourian villageand of reliving certain stirring days that I lived there so longago.

Last Saturday night the life of the President of the FrenchRepublic was taken by an Italian assassin. Last night a mobsurrounded our hotel, shouting, howling, singing the"Marseillaise," and pelting our windows with sticks and stones;for we have Italian waiters, and the mob demanded that they beturned out of the house instantly--to be drubbed, and then drivenout of the village. Everybody in the hotel remained up until farinto the night, and experienced the several kinds of terror whichone reads about in books which tell of nigh attacks by Italiansand by French mobs: the growing roar of the oncoming crowd; thearrival, with rain of stones and a crash of glass; the withdrawalto rearrange plans--followed by a silence ominous, threatening,and harder to bear than even the active siege and the noise. Thelandlord and the two village policemen stood their ground, and atlast the mob was persuaded to go away and leave our Italians inpeace. Today four of the ringleaders have been sentenced toheavy punishment of a public sort--and are become local heroes,by consequence.

That is the very mistake which was at first made in theMissourian village half a century ago. The mistake was repeatedand repeated--just as France is doing in these later months.

In our village we had our Ravochals, our Henrys, ourVaillants; and in a humble way our Cesario--I hope I have spelledthis name wrong. Fifty years ago we passed through, in allessentials, what France has been passing through during the pasttwo or three years, in the matter of periodical frights, horrors,and shudderings.

In several details the parallels are quaintly exact. Inthat day, for a man to speak out openly and proclaim himself anenemy of negro slavery was simply to proclaim himself a madman.For he was blaspheming against the holiest thing known to aMissourian, and could NOT be in his right mind. For a man toproclaim himself an anarchist in France, three years ago, was toproclaim himself a madman--he could not be in his right mind.

Now the original first blasphemer against any institutionprofoundly venerated by a community is quite sure to be inearnest; his followers and imitators may be humbugs and self-seekers, but he himself is sincere--his heart is in his protest.

Robert Hardy was our first ABOLITIONIST--awful name! He wasa journeyman cooper, and worked in the big cooper-shop belongingto the great pork-packing establishment which was Marion City'schief pride and sole source of prosperity. He was a New-Englander, a stranger. And, being a stranger, he was of courseregarded as an inferior person--for that has been human naturefrom Adam down--and of course, also, he was made to feelunwelcome, for this is the ancient law with man and the otheranimals. Hardy was thirty years old, and a bachelor; pale, givento reverie and reading. He was reserved, and seemed to preferthe isolation which had fallen to his lot. He was treated tomany side remarks by his fellows, but as he did not resent themit was decided that he was a coward.

All of a sudden he proclaimed himself an abolitionist--straight out and publicly! He said that negro slavery was acrime, an infamy. For a moment the town was paralyzed withastonishment; then it broke into a fury of rage and swarmedtoward the cooper-shop to lynch Hardy. But the Methodistminister made a powerful speech to them and stayed their hands.He proved to them that Hardy was insane and not responsible forhis words; that no man COULD be sane and utter such words.

So Hardy was saved. Being insane, he was allowed to go ontalking. He was found to be good entertainment. Several nightsrunning he made abolition speeches in the open air, and all thetown flocked to hear and laugh. He implored them to believe himsane and sincere, and have pity on the poor slaves, and takemeasurements for the restoration of their stolen rights, or in nolong time blood would flow--blood, blood, rivers of blood!

It was great fun. But all of a sudden the aspect of thingschanged. A slave came flying from Palmyra, the county-seat, afew miles back, and was about to escape in a canoe to Illinoisand freedom in the dull twilight of the approaching dawn, whenthe town constable seized him. Hardy happened along and tried torescue the negro; there was a struggle, and the constable did notcome out of it alive. Hardly crossed the river with the negro,and then came back to give himself up. All this took time, forthe Mississippi is not a French brook, like the Seine, the Loire,and those other rivulets, but is a real river nearly a mile wide.The town was on hand in force by now, but the Methodist preacherand the sheriff had already made arrangements in the interest oforder; so Hardy was surrounded by a strong guard and safelyconveyed to the village calaboose in spite of all the effort ofthe mob to get hold of him. The reader will have begun toperceive that this Methodist minister was a prompt man; a promptman, with active hands and a good headpiece. Williams was hisname--Damon Williams; Damon Williams in public, Damnation Williamsin private, because he was so powerful on that theme and so frequent.

The excitement was prodigious. The constable was the firstman who had ever been killed in the town. The event was by longodds the most imposing in the town's history. It lifted thehumble village into sudden importance; its name was ineverybody's mouth for twenty miles around. And so was the nameof Robert Hardy--Robert Hardy, the stranger, the despised. In aday he was become the person of most consequence in the region,the only person talked about. As to those other coopers, theyfound their position curiously changed--they were importantpeople, or unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or howsmall had been their intercourse with the new celebrity. The twoor three who had really been on a sort of familiar footing withhim found themselves objects of admiring interest with the publicand of envy with their shopmates.

The village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands.The new man was an enterprising fellow, and he made the most ofthe tragedy. He issued an extra. Then he put up posterspromising to devote his whole paper to matters connected with thegreat event--there would be a full and intensely interestingbiography of the murderer, and even a portrait of him. He was asgood as his word. He carved the portrait himself, on the back ofa wooden type--and a terror it was to look at. It made a greatcommotion, for this was the first time the village paper had evercontained a picture. The village was very proud. The output ofthe paper was ten times as great as it had ever been before, yetevery copy was sold.

When the trial came on, people came from all the farmsaround, and from Hannibal, and Quincy, and even from Keokuk; andthe court-house could hold only a fraction of the crowd thatapplied for admission. The trial was published in the villagepaper, with fresh and still more trying pictures of the accused.

Hardy was convicted, and hanged--a mistake. People camefrom miles around to see the hanging; they brought cakes andcider, also the women and children, and made a picnic of thematter. It was the largest crowd the village had ever seen. Therope that hanged Hardy was eagerly bought up, in inch samples,for everybody wanted a memento of the memorable event.

Martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations.Within one week afterward four young lightweights in the villageproclaimed themselves abolitionists! In life Hardy had not beenable to make a convert; everybody laughed at him; but nobodycould laugh at his legacy. The four swaggered around with theirslouch-hats pulled down over their faces, and hinted darkly atawful possibilities. The people were troubled and afraid, andshowed it. And they were stunned, too; they could not understandit. "Abolitionist" had always been a term of shame and horror;yet here were four young men who were not only not ashamed tobear that name, but were grimly proud of it. Respectable youngmen they were, too--of good families, and brought up in thechurch. Ed Smith, the printer's apprentice, nineteen, had beenthe head Sunday-school boy, and had once recited three thousandBible verses without making a break. Dick Savage, twenty, thebaker's apprentice; Will Joyce, twenty-two, journeymanblacksmith; and Henry Taylor, twenty-four, tobacco-stemmer--werethe other three. They were all of a sentimental cast; they wereall romance-readers; they all wrote poetry, such as it was; theywere all vain and foolish; but they had never before beensuspected of having anything bad in them.

They withdrew from society, and grew more and moremysterious and dreadful. They presently achieved the distinctionof being denounced by names from the pulpit--which made animmense stir! This was grandeur, this was fame. They wereenvied by all the other young fellows now. This was natural.Their company grew--grew alarmingly. They took a name. It was asecret name, and was divulged to no outsider; publicly they weresimply the abolitionists. They had pass-words, grips, and signs;they had secret meetings; their initiations were conducted withgloomy pomps and ceremonies, at midnight.

They always spoke of Hardy as "the Martyr," and every littlewhile they moved through the principal street in procession--atmidnight, black-robed, masked, to the measured tap of the solemndrum--on pilgrimage to the Martyr's grave, where they wentthrough with some majestic fooleries and swore vengeance upon hismurderers. They gave previous notice of the pilgrimage by smallposters, and warned everybody to keep indoors and darken allhouses along the route, and leave the road empty. These warningswere obeyed, for there was a skull and crossbones at the top ofthe poster.

When this kind of thing had been going on about eight weeks,a quite natural thing happened. A few men of character and gritwoke up out of the nightmare of fear which had been stupefyingtheir faculties, and began to discharge scorn and scoffings atthemselves and the community for enduring this child's-play; andat the same time they proposed to end it straightway. Everybodyfelt an uplift; life was breathed into their dead spirits; theircourage rose and they began to feel like men again. This was ona Saturday. All day the new feeling grew and strengthened; itgrew with a rush; it brought inspiration and cheer with it.Midnight saw a united community, full of zeal and pluck, and witha clearly defined and welcome piece of work in front of it. Thebest organizer and strongest and bitterest talker on that greatSaturday was the Presbyterian clergyman who had denounced theoriginal four from his pulpit--Rev. Hiram Fletcher--and hepromised to use his pulpit in the public interest again now. Onthe morrow he had revelations to make, he said--secrets of thedreadful society.

But the revelations were never made. At half past two inthe morning the dead silence of the village was broken by acrashing explosion, and the town patrol saw the preacher's housespring in a wreck of whirling fragments into the sky. Thepreacher was killed, together with a negro woman, his only slaveand servant.

The town was paralyzed again, and with reason. To struggleagainst a visible enemy is a thing worth while, and there is aplenty of men who stand always ready to undertake it; but tostruggle against an invisible one--an invisible one who sneaks inand does his awful work in the dark and leaves no trace--that isanother matter. That is a thing to make the bravest tremble andhold back.

The cowed populace were afraid to go to the funeral. Theman who was to have had a packed church to hear him expose anddenounce the common enemy had but a handful to see him buried.The coroner's jury had brought in a verdict of "death by thevisitation of God," for no witness came forward; if any existedthey prudently kept out of the way. Nobody seemed sorry. Nobodywanted to see the terrible secret society provoked into thecommission of further outrages. Everybody wanted the tragedyhushed up, ignored, forgotten, if possible.

And so there was a bitter surprise and an unwelcome one whenWill Joyce, the blacksmith's journeyman, came out and proclaimedhimself the assassin! Plainly he was not minded to be robbed ofhis glory. He made his proclamation, and stuck to it. Stuck toit, and insisted upon a trial. Here was an ominous thing; herewas a new and peculiarly formidable terror, for a motive wasrevealed here which society could not hope to deal withsuccessfully--VANITY, thirst for notoriety. If men were going tokill for notoriety's sake, and to win the glory of newspaperrenown, a big trial, and a showy execution, what possibleinvention of man could discourage or deter them? The town was ina sort of panic; it did not know what to do.

However, the grand jury had to take hold of the matter--ithad no choice. It brought in a true bill, and presently the casewent to the county court. The trial was a fine sensation. Theprisoner was the principal witness for the prosecution. He gavea full account of the assassination; he furnished even theminutest particulars: how he deposited his keg of powder andlaid his train--from the house to such-and-such a spot; howGeorge Ronalds and Henry Hart came along just then, smoking, andhe borrowed Hart's cigar and fired the train with it, shouting,"Down with all slave-tyrants!" and how Hart and Ronalds made noeffort to capture him, but ran away, and had never come forwardto testify yet.

But they had to testify now, and they did--and pitiful itwas to see how reluctant they were, and how scared. The crowdedhouse listened to Joyce's fearful tale with a profound andbreathless interest, and in a deep hush which was not broken tillhe broke it himself, in concluding, with a roaring repetition of his"Death to all slave-tyrants!"--which came so unexpectedly and sostartlingly that it made everyone present catch his breath and gasp.

The trial was put in the paper, with biography and large portrait,with other slanderous and insane pictures, and the edition soldbeyond imagination.

The execution of Joyce was a fine and picturesque thing. Itdrew a vast crowd. Good places in trees and seats on rail fencessold for half a dollar apiece; lemonade and gingerbread-standshad great prosperity. Joyce recited a furious and fantastic anddenunciatory speech on the scaffold which had imposing passagesof school-boy eloquence in it, and gave him a reputation on thespot as an orator, and his name, later, in the society's records,of the "Martyr Orator." He went to his death breathing slaughter andcharging his society to "avenge his murder." If he knew anything ofhuman nature he knew that to plenty of young fellows present in thatgreat crowd he was a grand hero--and enviably situated.

He was hanged. It was a mistake. Within a month from hisdeath the society which he had honored had twenty new members,some of them earnest, determined men. They did not courtdistinction in the same way, but they celebrated his martyrdom.The crime which had been obscure and despised had become loftyand glorified.

Such things were happening all over the country. Wild-brained martyrdom was succeeded by uprising and organization.Then, in natural order, followed riot, insurrection, and thewrack and restitutions of war. It was bound to come, and itwould naturally come in that way. It has been the manner ofreform since the beginning of the world.

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SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY

Interlaken, Switzerland, 1891.

It is a good many years since I was in Switzerland last. Inthat remote time there was only one ladder railway in thecountry. That state of things is all changed. There isn't amountain in Switzerland now that hasn't a ladder railroad or twoup its back like suspenders; indeed, some mountains are latticedwith them, and two years hence all will be. In that day thepeasant of the high altitudes will have to carry a lantern whenhe goes visiting in the night to keep from stumbling overrailroads that have been built since his last round. And also inthat day, if there shall remain a high-altitude peasant whosepotato-patch hasn't a railroad through it, it would make him asconspicuous as William Tell.

However, there are only two best ways to travel throughSwitzerland. The first best is afloat. The second best is byopen two-horse carriage. One can come from Lucerne to Interlakenover the Brunig by ladder railroad in an hour or so now, but youcan glide smoothly in a carriage in ten, and have two hours forluncheon at noon--for luncheon, not for rest. There is nofatigue connected with the trip. One arrives fresh in spirit andin person in the evening--no fret in his heart, no grime on hisface, no grit in his hair, not a cinder in his eye. This is theright condition of mind and body, the right and due preparationfor the solemn event which closed the day--stepping withmetaphorically uncovered head into the presence of the mostimpressive mountain mass that the globe can show--the Jungfrau.The stranger's first feeling, when suddenly confronted by thattowering and awful apparition wrapped in its shroud of snow, isbreath-taking astonishment. It is as if heaven's gates had swungopen and exposed the throne.

It is peaceful here and pleasant at Interlaken. Nothinggoing on--at least nothing but brilliant life-giving sunshine.There are floods and floods of that. One may properly speak ofit as "going on," for it is full of the suggestion of activity;the light pours down with energy, with visible enthusiasm. Thisis a good atmosphere to be in, morally as well as physically.After trying the political atmosphere of the neighboringmonarchies, it is healing and refreshing to breathe air that hasknown no taint of slavery for six hundred years, and to comeamong a people whose political history is great and fine, andworthy to be taught in all schools and studied by all races andpeoples. For the struggle here throughout the centuries has notbeen in the interest of any private family, or any church, but inthe interest of the whole body of the nation, and for shelter andprotection of all forms of belief. This fact is colossal. Ifone would realize how colossal it is, and of what dignity andmajesty, let him contrast it with the purposes and objects of theCrusades, the siege of York, the War of the Roses, and otherhistoric comedies of that sort and size.

Last week I was beating around the Lake of Four Cantons, andI saw Rutli and Altorf. Rutli is a remote little patch ofmeadow, but I do not know how any piece of ground could be holieror better worth crossing oceans and continents to see, since itwas there that the great trinity of Switzerland joined hands sixcenturies ago and swore the oath which set their enslaved andinsulted country forever free; and Altorf is also honorableground and worshipful, since it was there that William, surnamedTell (which interpreted means "The foolish talker"--that is tosay, the too-daring talker), refused to bow to Gessler's hat. Oflate years the prying student of history has been delightinghimself beyond measure over a wonderful find which he has made--to wit, that Tell did not shoot the apple from his son's head.To hear the students jubilate, one would suppose that thequestion of whether Tell shot the apple or didn't was animportant matter; whereas it ranks in importance exactly with thequestion of whether Washington chopped down the cherry-tree ordidn't. The deeds of Washington, the patriot, are the essentialthing; the cherry-tree incident is of no consequence. To provethat Tell did shoot the apple from his son's head would merelyprove that he had better nerve than most men and was skillfulwith a bow as a million others who preceded and followed him, butnot one whit more so. But Tell was more and better than a meremarksman, more and better than a mere cool head; he was a type;he stands for Swiss patriotism; in his person was represented awhole people; his spirit was their spirit--the spirit which wouldbow to none but God, the spirit which said this in words andconfirmed it with deeds. There have always been Tells inSwitzerland--people who would not bow. There was a sufficiencyof them at Rutli; there were plenty of them at Murten; plenty atGrandson; there are plenty today. And the first of them all--thevery first, earliest banner-bearer of human freedom in thisworld--was not a man, but a woman--Stauffacher's wife. There shelooms dim and great, through the haze of the centuries,delivering into her husband's ear that gospel of revolt which wasto bear fruit in the conspiracy of Rutli and the birth of thefirst free government the world had ever seen.

From this Victoria Hotel one looks straight across a flat oftrifling width to a lofty mountain barrier, which has a gatewayin it shaped like an inverted pyramid. Beyond this gatewayarises the vast bulk of the Jungfrau, a spotless mass of gleamingsnow, into the sky. The gateway, in the dark-colored barrier,makes a strong frame for the great picture. The somber frame andthe glowing snow-pile are startlingly contrasted. It is thisframe which concentrates and emphasizes the glory of the Jungfrauand makes it the most engaging and beguiling and fascinating